Larkrigg Fell

by Freda Lightfoot

  Yet how could she go along with this silly rural dream? She might agree to do the place up a bit, in order to make a profit on the sale. Money always came in handy. As for being self-sufficient? No way. ‘Organic gardening, my ass,’ she said.

  Beth chuckled, not too disturbed by her attitude. Have I succeeded? She wondered. Can I make her agree?

  As they walked down the fellside with the late afternoon sun warming their necks, they were both silent, deep in their own thoughts.

  Next day they went again. This time Tessa went with them, James having been left at Ashlea with Sally Ann.

  The mountains seemed hazy and far away in the summer sun, tiny blue butterflies flying up before them as they made their way up the fell, the sound of bees busy in the heather. Beth was bouncing ahead, Tessa laughingly trying to keep up with her. Only Sarah was subdued, already having second thoughts over showing an interest in the place.

  As they marched along the stony drive, Beth increased her fears by pointing out pot-holes that would need to be filled in, tree branches needing to be lopped, weeds to be pulled up. It all sounded very much like hard work.

  They found a pile of logs already split in the yard, and the kitchen door wide open. Someone had tried, and failed, to light the range, filling the kitchen with filthy smoke and soot.

  ‘Lord, what’s happened?’

  Appalled, Beth was for running into the house to see if any further damage had been done. Tessa stopped her.

  ‘Hold on. This is a popular route for tramps heading north and that’s probably all this is. But it might be someone with a more serious intent.’

  ‘Burglars you mean?’ Beth was horrified.

  ‘We should do a recce first. Best to be on the safe side.’

  They crept out the back door again and started to circumnavigate the house, peeping in windows where Beth had thrown back the shutters.

  Sarah stepped over to one for a peek inside. At first she could make out nothing in the dim interior and then she gasped, bringing the other two running.

  ‘Will you look at this.’ There was laughter in her voice and when she turned to beckon them, she put a finger to her lips, dark eyes brimming with merry good humour. ‘Don’t make a sound. What a treat.’

  Exchanging puzzled glances Tessa and Beth stepped up to the window and peered inside. They were looking into what had once been a small dining room, a fitted walnut dresser revealing the room’s past purpose. The floorboards were bare and the room quite empty, except in one corner where two figures lay face down on dirty grey blankets. Clearly male, young, and entirely naked, their undoubtedly beautiful bodies glistened in a shaft of sunlight.

  Beth’s eyes grew round with shock and she gave a small gasp of alarm. They looked relaxed and companionable, the remains of a meal close by on the dusty floorboards among pools of water. A black dog lay beside them, nose on paws, fast asleep.

  ‘What on earth ... ?’

  ‘They’ve been for a swim in the tarn and come here to dry off,’ Sarah suggested.

  Tessa considered the firm round buttocks. ‘I don’t recognise either of them.’

  Sarah gave a small explosion of laughter, hastily stifled by Beth who, starting to hiccup with giggles herself, slapped a hand over her sister’s mouth.

  ‘Don’t, they’ll hear us.’

  All three girls leaned against each other, weak with laughter, quite unable to stop the tide of giggles that threatened to convulse them. Then suddenly the dog lifted its head, glared at them through the window and started to bark.

  ‘Hell, they’ve heard us,’ Tessa cried, and as one they fled.

  Chapter Five

  Cathra Crag, isolated as it was at the head of the dale, didn’t offer many opportunities for meeting girls. Andrew Barton eased his back on the clipping stool while he waited for the next sheep to be brought to him and gazed up at the scree-streaked slopes above, shading from pale grey to pinky-purple. The farm was sound enough and had been in his family for generations, though much of the land was poor hill grazing with some allotment bounded by dry-stone walls. Thirty Galloways grazed the richer pickings but the sheep flock, mainly Herdwicks and Swaledales, were content to nibble what croppings they could get on the high fells.

  Its isolation had never troubled him. Until this summer.

  Now he couldn’t get the memory of her out of his mind, though he’d seen her less than half a dozen times. Once at the Jubilee celebrations and a few occasions since on long walks, feeling a bit out of place with three females.

  He could still recall that first moment he’d set eyes on her. Serene and pale with softly rounded cheeks. He remembered wondering what colour her eyes were as they were mostly shaded by the lids, fringed with surprisingly dark lashes. Apart from that one startling moment when she had looked directly at him, and he’d been too overwhelmed by the unexpectedness of his emotions to take note. Since then she’d studiously avoided his gaze altogether.

  He’d heard the twins were staying on and the thought excited him. Should he try to see her again? Dare he? She hadn’t seemed too interested thus far. Done her best to avoid him, in fact. He guessed she was rather shy and he’d never been any good with girls. He hadn’t had much practice.

  And what did he have to offer any female? A farm, with a flock of only four hundred ewes which his father considered too small, its future too uncertain to spend money on modernisation, so it clung to the old methods. As he was doing now, taking the clip with hand shears. A long and laborious task. Not that Andrew, twenty-one years old and anxious to be free of parental restraint necessarily agreed with this policy but then he wasn’t in charge.

  Although most of the work was done by his father, the farm belonged to his grandfather, Seth, eighty-six this year. And would remain so for as long as the old man had breath in his body. Or so he was fond of saying. Andrew did not for a moment doubt he would reach his century, at least.

  Three men on one farm was not an easy option, even if the old one did spend most of his day in the chimney corner sucking his pipe. There was no doubt who held sway. Old Seth considered himself a reasonable man but held an opinion on everything and addressed his son at times as if he were a boy still.

  Not that Billy took much notice. He was as stubborn as his father and had gone his own way for much of his life, even more so since the death of his wife, Emily, in 1956. Having delivered the farm with its much needed son at the late age of thirty-eight, Andrew’s mother had uncomplainingly died. Nothing had moved forward at Cathra Crag from that date on.

  There Billy stood now, one leg hooked around the long stick of his crook, resting a foot while he counted his sheep. His long-sighted shepherd’s eyes peered out from under the neb of his cap, missing nothing of the scene around him.

  Andrew bent again to his task with a weary sigh. He’d get a second-hand generator next year if he had to fight both of them to do it. Even the clipping stool he used had been made by his great grandfather in the early part of the last century and the shears should by rights be in Kendal museum, for all they were still as sharp as a razor. The distinctive smell of oily wool filled his nostrils, his hands sore from grasping each animal, and the pain in his back took his breath away. But for all that, he loved working with the sheep. Not for a moment could he envisage leaving Cathra Crag, for all the loneliness biting into him right now, making him feel sour and raw.

  And testing his wits and muscle against each ewe gave him good practice at ‘taking hold’ for the Cumberland and Westmorland wrestling contests of which he was so fond. Perhaps he did love tradition, for all he might so often rail against it.

  Which brought his mind back to Beth Brandon and her sister. But what position was he in to start courting a lass? He had naught to call his own, nor ever would have, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.

  He knew that if they didn’t modernise the farm would die. Money seemed to get tighter with each passing year. Why couldn’t his father see that the old days were gone? Bro
ombank surged forward, always making changes, keeping up with the times. They had a proper automatic milking parlour, and electric shearing. Why couldn’t they do the same here? Why was Billy so determined to wait for the old man to die before he tried anything new?

  As Andrew checked the ewe for fitness and marked it with the farm’s own identifying mark he could easily call to mind the pale oval of her sweet face, the chestnut hair clipped back behind the most delightful curl of an ear. Mind, the other sister was even more of a stunner. Quite took your breath away, she did.

  He let the animal go, awkward in its new nakedness as its lamb greeted it with much anxious bleating. Then laughing, he reached for the next.

  Oh, aye, no doubt about it, he’d have to do summat to make sure he met them again. Mebbe he could call, friendly like. There’d be naught lost by that.

  ‘Hey up,’ shouted Billy. ‘There’s one missing.’

  Andrew looked up. ‘What?’

  Billy closed the pen gate on the last counted ewe and walked over to his son. ‘Three hundred and ninety nine I’ve counted. One short. Where’s it at do you reckon?’

  Andrew screwed up his eyes to gaze out over the fell, at once concerned. He did not for a moment doubt his father’s counting ability. It was a skill honed over a life-time, using the old Norse words of Yan, tan, tethera and so on. Each ten sheep marked on a slate. Billy was never wrong. ‘Mebbe its got caught up somewhere.’

  ‘We’ll have to go take a look.’

  ‘Yes.’ It was always worrying to lose a sheep. They knew their own heaf so well they rarely strayed. Apart from the misery and distress caused to the poor animal by injury, or worse, predatory attack, there was the serious loss of profit to be considered. A good ewe was a valuable animal, no doubt about it. ‘I’d best finish this pen first,’ Andrew said. ‘If we’d gone electric we’d have been done by now.’

  ‘Don’t start on that caper, lad. I’m not in t’mood. Hand clipping were good enough for me father, and it’s good enough for me. We’ve allus managed well enough, even in the war.’

  ‘Labour was a lot cheaper then, Dad.’

  He sniffed. ‘We’ll talk about it to Father some time.’

  Which meant never. Andrew sighed but his own brown eyes, the mirror of Billy’s, warmed with affection. His father was not an unkind man. Many would call him soft in the head. He’d been known to make a wooden splint for many an injured creature’s leg that others would have put down without a second thought, or take it up to Ellen Martin, an old friend who lived high on the fell.

  Billy had brought up his only son single-handed, with much love. No doubt about that. But he was stubborn and set in his ways.

  Yet stubbornness was essential in order to survive on these fells. A farmer needed to be tough, resolute, taciturn, and, despite their shortcomings, Andrew felt he lived with two of the best.

  ‘You’ll have to come round to it in the end,’ he warned. ‘If we don’t go forward, we go back. Losing this sheep proves my point. How have we the time to go and look for it when we still have half the flock to clip, with little extra help beyond our neighbour, old Tim here, and no guarantee the weather’ll hold? We’re not a museum piece, you know.’

  ‘Cut thee cackle. Thee won’t addle a living with talking. I know who’s fault it is that a yew has gone missing. It were them trippers leaving gates open everywhere. They should be banned from farm land. They’re a blight on humanity.’

  Andrew sighed. He could not deny that visitors created problems on a farm but they brought a good deal of money to the Lakes.

  He glanced up at the sky. It was a hot, dry day, not a sign of mist, perfect for the clipping. Wasting half of it hunting for a ewe that had probably got its foot caught in some rabbit hole was worse than a nuisance. Tomorrow could be wet, then they’d have to wait till the fleeces had dried off before they could start over again. Which would mean a longer delay before the wool could be sold and might well affect the price.

  ‘We’ll have to leave it and take the risk it’ll wait. The weather won’t.’

  But Billy wasn’t having it. ‘We’ll take a look round this evening, before it gets too dark.’

  They found the ewe that night by the light of his lantern. Half the flesh had been mauled from her body. She’d desperately struggled to escape and been dragged several feet, streaking the ground with her own blood. Well chewed, she had plainly taken some time to die.

  ‘Dogs,’ said Andrew.

  ‘Aye.’

  Both men stared grimly down at the dead animal. The sight always distressed Andrew, used as he was to the rigours of farming life. Sheep worrying had to be treated as infectious. Once a dog had tasted blood, perhaps from an already dead carcass, the lust for killing could rise and spread. By nature a pack animal, any rogue dog would readily recruit others. It made the killing easier.

  ‘When I catch it,’ Billy said, ‘Whoever it belongs to, it’ll wish it’d never been born.’

  It had been agreed that the twins would stay on for a while. Meg had welcomed the idea and after some transatlantic phone calls permission had been granted, along with a modest but useful sum to help finance the Larkrigg Hall project. They’d spent much of the last few days speculating about the respective owners of the bare buttocks, Tess considering various past boy friends, which had resulted in yet more hilarity. It was hard to put the young men from their minds and Sarah was anxious to return to the Hall to see if their unexpected guests were still there.

  When the twins reached Larkrigg Hall the pile of logs still stood in the yard. Someone had attempted to scrub down the smoke blackened kitchen, with very little success since it looked blacker than ever but the small dining room, indeed every room, was quite empty.

  ‘Which is a great pity,’ Sarah remarked. ‘Just when things were really looking up.’

  ‘I’m not sure we want strangers in our house,’ Beth protested. ‘Certainly not squatters. Whoever they were, I’m glad they’ve gone.’ She marched out into the yard and scowled at the logs as if they were in some way to blame. ‘I shall light a fire, boil some water and start the big clean up.’ She heard Sarah’s groan but refused to respond to it.

  While Beth struggled to light the fire, puffing and blowing the tiny flames into life, Sarah rubbed at a dirty mirror on the wall, pulled a lipstick from the pocket of her jeans and began to apply it. ‘Maybe they’ll be back. Can’t say we haven’t seen what they’ve got to offer, can we?’

  Beth’s cheeks flared to the colour of the flames she was blowing. A puff of smoke enveloped her and she turned hastily away, eyes streaming, choking for breath.

  In spite of their girlish giggling, she’d begun to worry about the unknown young men. Who were they? What were they doing at Larkrigg? How had they got in? The idea of uninvited intruders who might return at any moment, troubled her considerably.

  When she’d got the fire going to her satisfaction she piled on the logs and set a pan of water to boil. ‘There, we’ll soon have some hot water. This is fun, isn’t it?’

  ‘Hysterical.’

  ‘Do you think we should get a plumber to look at the old range, or a chimney sweep for the flue?’

  ‘Haven’t the faintest idea, darling.’

  It took most of the morning to make the kitchen anything like decent. And as she scrubbed and bleached, mopped and scoured, Beth’s usually placid disposition was put under extreme stress, for throughout it all Sarah sat on a chair, feet propped up on the corner of the table, reading a magazine.

  ‘Will you lift your feet please? Could you move your chair?’ Sarah sighed heavily each time, watching in disbelief as Beth set about rubbing the stove piping with polish and a cloth, bringing out the warm glowing sheen of copper.

  ‘For goodness sake, you’ll be washing the coal next.’

  Beth’s anger bubbled up, hot and unexpected. ‘And are you going to sit there and watch me do it?’

  ‘You’re the one who wants to play house.’

  ‘You promise
d to help.’

  ‘Stop being such an old woman, Beth.’

  ‘I will be an old woman by the time I’ve finished if I have to do up this house all by myself.’

  ‘It was your idea.’

  ‘You agreed.’

  Sarah pulled a wry face in mock innocence. ‘Oh dear, we are in a paddy, aren’t we? Get out of bed the wrong side did we?’

  There were times, Beth thought, when she came close to hating her sister. She drew in a slow, steadying breath. ‘I’m simply asking for co-operation. Is that so unreasonable?’

  ‘Has it upset you because some naked but undoubtedly delicious male bodies have lain in your precious house?’ Sarah pushed back her chair and flounced away, ebony hair crackling with a life of its own, her tone cutting. ‘You’re a sexual cripple, d’you know that? No wonder Jeremy abandoned you. You bored him rigid. He told me so.’

  Silence. Thick and painful. ‘Jeremy would never say such a thing.’

  ‘I assure you he did.’

  Beth’s cheeks grew hot with embarrassment. ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘Yes you do. You’re far too prissy for your own good. Relax. Enjoy life, as I do.’ Sarah draped herself decorously on a chair, then catching sight of her sister’s face, drained of all colour, she was filled with contrition and ran to fling her arms about her. ‘Oh, take no notice of me. I’m in a foul mood. I really didn’t mean it.’

  Beth took a shaky breath. ‘I know you didn’t. Why are we quarrelling, just because of some stupid squatters? We’ll probably never set eyes on them again. I, for one, sincerely hope so.’

  A grim laugh from the shadows by the door brought both girls whirling. ‘Because being the landed gentry you object to sharing with the peasants?’